Michelle Zauner Quotes

Michelle Zauner

Profession : Singer

Birth : March 29, 1989

I read Lorrie Moore and Marilynne Robinson and Jhumpa Lahiri and Richard Ford, John Updike, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov - all of whom I really fell in love with.

Michelle Zauner

I don't really listen to podcasts - I like one podcast and it's called Song Exploder.

Michelle Zauner

There are so many different things that lend themselves to what makes a song magical, that go beyond just the lyrics or the composition. But arrangement and production and performance have such huge stakes in what makes that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

Michelle Zauner

But for a song like 'Paprika,' I typically feel like I need to experience anguish a lot of the time to feel like I've put in enough hard work.

Michelle Zauner

When you're looking back at your ancestral history or the cultural context of your identity, it's natural to search for that in the food.

Michelle Zauner

One thing that was pretty eye-opening to me was that red pepper came from the New World in the 15th or 16th century. So these things that we think of as inherently Korean actually have an even longer history than that.

Michelle Zauner

The most Korean thing you can eat that's so easy is Shin Ramyun with an egg cracked into it and kimchi on the side. I feel like every Korean person eats that at nighttime or for a snack.

Michelle Zauner

I love kitchenware. I'm very frugal and I don't buy a lot of things, but I'm frivolous when it comes to buying groceries and kitchenware.

Michelle Zauner

My mom would frequently tell me to save your tears for when your mother dies.

Michelle Zauner

I never thought I would be able to play in Seoul, the city where my mother was raised and I was born, and I was able to perform for my aunt.

Michelle Zauner

Soft Sounds' was about disassociating to preserve my mental health.

Michelle Zauner

I tried to be a musician for seven years and I'd given it my all, but no one was really interested or it wasn't enough.

Michelle Zauner

Being a caretaker for someone who's dying was really, really hard at 25.

Michelle Zauner

I felt like I could never write nonfiction, because I would have to spend so many pages explaining my ethnic background, and that wasn't really the story that I ever was interested in telling.

Michelle Zauner

Food in general is really important for any diaspora, and it's really important for Korean people. This was a connection my mom and I could always have together that made her feel like I was more hers.

Michelle Zauner

When I'm in America, everyone thinks of me as the Asian girl. When I go to Korea, everyone thinks of me as an American.

Michelle Zauner

I grew up playing video games, since I was probably five years old.

Michelle Zauner

My records have a lot of collaborators on them, and when you're writing a book, it's a very insular process that's very confusing and dark. It's a lot of writing and rewriting in a way that I don't do so much when I'm writing songs.

Michelle Zauner

If you wrote a crummy line or maybe didn't sing to the best of your ability, there's layers of 10 different instruments all working to convey something. In writing prose for the memoir, if it's not working, it's just not working. It's harder to figure out how to fix it.

Michelle Zauner

Sometimes I can really agonize over a creative project and forget that it's essentially professional play, you know?

Michelle Zauner